Category: Bazaar News

Swear words are a powerful function of human language—so powerful that we aren’t supposed to say them, at least not in polite company. The right expletives, unleashed at the right moment, can be used to cause hurt or offense. They facilitate the expression of intense emotions. They may even help us better tolerate pain, as anyone who has yelped a curse word after stubbing a toe knows.

But why are certain words considered so profane that we feel the need to bleep them on TV and scold our kids for using them? According to a colorful new study in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, which analyzed swear words across multiple languages, the way curse words sound—or don’t sound—may make them offensive to the human ear.

At the heart of the study is a fundamental question in the field of linguistics: Is language arbitrary? An established convention holds that yes, the relationship between the sound of words and their meanings is typically random. But some experts have challenged this notion, positing that certain sounds are “intrinsically associated with certain meanings,” write study authors Shiri Lev-Ari and Ryan McKay from Royal Holloway, University of London. Across many languages, for example, the word for nose is likely to include the nasal sound “n.” 

Research has also shown that English swear words have a higher proportion of p, t, and k sounds, which are known as plosives. But, Lev-Ari and McKay wondered, is this just a quirk of English?

Searching for patterns among the world’s naughtiest words, the researchers asked fluent speakers of five unrelated languages—Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Korean, and Russian—to list at least five of the most vulgar words in their language, excluding racial slurs. The study’s authors did not find a higher incidence of plosives in these expletives. But they did observe that the words in their data set were less likely to include approximants—sounds that include l, r, w and y—than might be expected by chance. Words containing these sounds, the authors theorize, may be less “suitable” for causing offense.

The researchers next recruited 215 people to listen to pairs of words in an unfamiliar language and indicate which one was the swear word. Unbeknownst to the participants, all the word pairs were imaginary, created by the study authors to include one word with an approximant and one without. Participants were more likely to guess that the words without approximants were profanity.

In the final phase of their study, the researchers looked at minced oaths—variations of English swear words that are considered less offensive, like “darn” as an alternative to “damn.” Approximants appeared more frequently in minced oaths than in the swear words themselves, suggesting once again that l, r, w and y don’t have the prickly effect of other sounds

“It may be that approximants are sound-symbolically associated with calm and contentment,” Lev-Ari and McKay write, “and so are unsuitable for giving offense.” In any case, the researchers conclude, the absence of approximants in expletives suggests there is a universal pattern to swearing—and when it comes to words that would make your grandma blush, sounds like l, r, w and y just don’t pack the right damn punch.

Artists have been taking inspiration from each other since time immemorial, and musicians are no different. Here are a few of the many songs that reference literature in genres from hip hop to classic rock.

The Roots named their fourth studio album after the novel Things Fall Apart by legendary Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, and the song “100% Dundee” refers to both the novel and Achebe by name. The band was introduced to Things Fall Apart by Rich Nichols, their late manager and producer, who said that Tariq Trotter (a.k.a. Black Thought) reminded him of one of the book’s characters. “I went out to get the book,” Questlove explained in 2019, “and Rich explained to me that Tariq was basically a very skilled warrior lost on his own homeland.”

Taylor Swift, who frequently references books in her songs, seems to have adapted a famous line from F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in evermore’s “happiness”: “I hope she’ll be a beautiful fool / Who takes my spot next to you.” This echoes Daisy Buchanan’s hopes for her daughter Pammy in The Great Gatsby: “I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

Swift also references a “green light,” in “happiness,” recalling the green light on Daisy and Tom’s dock in Gatsby. Swift previously referenced the novel in Reputation’s “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” when she sang, “Feeling so Gatsby for that whole year.”

The Smiths’ work contains multitudes of literary references; perhaps their most overt homage is within the 1984 B-side “How Soon Is Now.” The opening—“I am the son / And the heir / Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar / I am the son and heir / Of nothing in particular”—is an adaptation of part of a line from George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch: “To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular.”

The song’s title is also a literary reference; it was taken from a line in Marjorie Rosen’s feminist film history book, Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies & the American Dream, in which she writes, “How immediately can we be gratified? How soon is now?”

“Killing an Arab”—which has unsurprisingly courted controversy over the years due to people taking its title literally—tells a condescended version of the plot of L’Étranger (The Stranger) by philosopher Albert Camus, in which the main character kills a Middle Eastern man on a beach. The Cure frontman Robert Smith has expressed regret about the song’s title, telling Chart Attack in 2001 that “One of the themes of the song is that everyone’s existence is pretty much the same. Everyone lives, everyone dies, our existences are the same. It’s as far from a racist song as you can write. It seems though that no one can get past the title and that’s incredibly frustrating. The fact is it’s based on a book that’s set in France and deals with the problems of the Algerians, so it was only geographical reasons why it was an Arab and not anyone else.”

Considered a classic of both gay and Chicano literature, John Rechy’s semiautobiographical 1963 novel City of Night—about a unnamed gay hustler traveling across 1950s America—has been cited as an influence by many artists, including Gus van Sant (who said it helped shape his film My Own Private Idaho) and David Bowie (who wrote a cover blurb for the book’s 50th anniversary edition). The Doors can also be counted among the book’s many fans: The band—whose name was derived from the title of Aldous Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception, which was itself taken from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell—used the title of Rechy’s book in the 1971 hit “L.A. Woman.” The band’s drummer, John Densmore, was also part of a panel at UCLA discussing the book’s legacy for its 50th anniversary in 2013.

In the liner notes for “Make Love Stay,” Fogelberg wrote that the song is “a musical question that, unfortunately, eludes me still.” Tom Robbins’s 1980 novel Still Life With Woodpecker—about the romance between an anarchist and a princess—is also about finding an answer to that question, which is asked repeatedly in the book.

From The Police to The Veronicas, many musical artists have made allusions to Vladimir Nabokov’s infamous 1955 novel Lolita in their songs, but none expressed as much obsession with the book as Lana Del Rey. Rolling Stone noted that her 2012 album Born to Die contained “loads of Lolita references.” Among them are the songs “Lolita” and “Off to the Races,” which uses the novel’s famous lines, “Light of my life / Fire of my loins” in its chorus.

George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 is another book popular with musicians, showing up in songs by everyone from Stevie Wonder to the Dead Kennedys. “Testify,” from Rage Against the Machine’s 1999 album The Battle of Los Angeles, is one of the most explicit examples. The song features a version of one of the party slogans of 1984’s government: “Who controls the past now controls the future / Who controls the present now controls the past.” In both the book and the song, the phrase indicates that the government and the media control the narrative by controlling which events are talked about.

The Velvet Underground (whose members took its name from a nonfiction book by journalist Michael Leigh) found inspiration for “Venus in Furs” in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s classic novel about sadomasochism. The title refers to the book’s framing story, in which a man tells a friend about a dream where he meets the goddess Venus draped in fur.

In her popular tribute to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush tells the story from the point of view of Cathy as she stands at the window of Heathcliff’s house begging to be let in, even echoing some of Cathy’s lines from the novel. “Really what sparked that off was a TV thing I saw as a young child,” Bush later said. “I just walked into the room and caught the end of [Wuthering Heights]. And I am sure one of the reasons it stuck so heavily in my mind was because of the spirit of Cathy and as a child I was called Cathy, it later changed to Kate. It was just a matter of exaggerating all my bad areas, because she’s a really vile person, she’s just so headstrong and passionate and … crazy, you know?”

This isn’t the only song that Wuthering Heights has inspired: Jim Steinman wrote his iconic song “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”—which was first recorded in 1989 by Pandora’s Box and then in 1996 by Celine Dion, whose version reached No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and went two times platinum— “while under the influence of Wuthering Heights, which is one of my favorite books,” he wrote on his website. He strove to have the song capture the book’s themes of obsessive love, comparing the end result to “an erotic motorcycle.”

The music video version of BTS’s song “Blood Sweat & Tears” was directly inspired by Hermann Hesse’s 1919 novel Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair’s Youth. Like the book, the video is filled with surrealist imagery and themes of duality; it also features an interlude where BTS member RM (formerly Rap Monster) recites a passage from the novel (“He, too, was a tempter. He, too, was a link to the second. The evil world with which I no longer wanted to have anything to do”). “We felt that there were a lot of similarities between parts of ‘Demian’ and the things we wanted to say,” RM said in an interview. “So we used a lot of objects and elements from ‘Demian’ in our jacket photos and music video.”

Choosing a bright color in the red family for a statement wall or some other fixture can be a tricky business. Too close to the red end of the spectrum and you evoke fire trucks, stop signs, and Clifford the Big Red Dog. But too far toward pink and you’re treading into Barbie and Elle Woods territory.

If paying tribute to any of that seems appealing to you, go for it. If you’re looking for a pinkish red with a little more nuance, though, Pantone’s 2023 Color of the Year might pique your interest. Viva Magenta 18-750, according to Pantone, is “a bright, crimson red” that pairs well with “pale grays, blues, or pastels,” as well as with other shades of pink. “Viva Magenta is brave and fearless, a pulsating color whose exuberance promotes a joyous and optimistic celebration, writing a new narrative,” the company wrote. “It is a color that is audacious, full of wit and inclusive of all.” 

As NPR reports, the Pantone Color Institute started the tradition of picking a forward-looking annual color in 2000, when cerulean blue earned the title. Researchers analyze design trends across multiple industries and throughout culture to determine what people will gravitate toward in the coming year.

“Influences may also stem from new technologies, materials, textures and effects that impact color, relevant social media platforms and even upcoming sporting events that capture worldwide attention,” Laurie Pressman, Pantone Color Institute vice president, said in an interview on the company’s website.

One key quality that contributed to the selection of Viva Magenta is its link to nature. The carmine dye originally used to create it and similar colors comes from the cochineal insect, a cactus-eating Mesoamerican parasite.

Looks like we’ll have to wait another year for lusty gallant, bastard-amber, or one of our other favorite obscure colors to get a chance at the Pantone title.

[h/t NPR]

Booker T. Washington was one of the most influential—and, at times, controversial—Black leaders of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Born enslaved, Washington went on to found and foster a prestigious university, advise presidents, and speak to audiences across the country. Here are a few facts about this innovative educator.

Washington was born on April 5, 1856, on a small tobacco plantation in Virginia. His mother, Jane, was an enslaved cook for the plantation owner. Washington didn’t know his father, who was white. The Civil War ended when Washington was 9, and he and his family, along with the other people enslaved on the plantation, were freed.

The T in Booker T. Washington stands for Taliaferro, which means “iron cutter” in Italian. Reports vary, but Washington’s mother apparently named her son Booker Taliaferro when he was born, and later dropped the second name. Washington chose his surname while in school, though it’s unclear whether went with it because it was his stepfather’s first name or because it was the name of the first U.S. president. He later used Taliaferro as his middle name.

Shortly after the war ended, Washington’s family moved to Malden, West Virginia, to join his stepfather, and he was put to work. The boy labored in the nearby Kanawha salt mines, shoveling and packing salt into barrels. He wanted to attend school and got permission to do so on the condition that he first worked from 4 a.m. to 9 a.m. in the salt mines, and again later in the day.

From ages 10 to 12, Washington worked in coal mines and continued to juggle hard physical toil with schoolwork. At 15, he was hired as a servant for the wife of the owner of the coal mines, Viola Ruffner. A year later, he left for the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University) in Virginia to continue his education.

Because his stepfather took most of his wages for family expenses, Washington had little money to travel, and instead walked a good portion of the 400 miles to Hampton. He arrived disheveled and dirty, but determined to get in. It took some time for Washington to convince anyone at the school to give him a chance. His entrance exam consisted of cleaning a room; he passed, and credited his time with Ruffner for his ability to ace the white-glove inspection. He then took a job as a janitor to help pay his way.

While at Hampton, Washington got to know its principal and founder, Samuel Chapman Armstrong. The son of missionaries in Hawaii, Armstrong had commanded Black troops on the Union side in the Civil War, then turned his focus to educating Black students. Hampton opened in Virginia in 1868, starting out as a school to train Black educators and teach useful job skills. Washington wholeheartedly adopted its principles and held Armstrong in high esteem.

In May 1881, Armstrong recommended Washington to lead a new school in Tuskegee, Alabama, that would follow the Hampton model. The Alabama state legislature had approved a $2000 yearly appropriation for the Tuskegee Normal School. But when Washington arrived, he found that the funding covered only salaries—there were no buildings and no land.

A local Black church loaned him a shanty, and he borrowed money from Hampton Institute’s treasurer to buy an abandoned 100-acre plantation. Washington recruited students and opened the school on July 4, 1881. In addition to learning trades like carpentry and printing, students helped make and sell bricks to raise money, and they helped construct school buildings as well.

Washington was exceptionally skilled at fundraising and networking, and he enjoyed public speaking. As he worked to build Tuskegee, his profile rose as he interacted with wealthy benefactors, politicians, and citizens.

By its 25th year, in 1906, Tuskegee had grown to an 83-building campus on 2000 acres with an endowment fund of $1.28 million (about $39.6 million today). Guests at the 25th anniversary celebration included Andrew Carnegie, Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot, and William H. Taft (then Secretary of War) [PDF]. Today it’s known as Tuskegee University.

Washington believed that economic security and independence was the most pressing need for Black people, and that harmony among races would eventually follow. In that vein, he promoted vocational skills and labor over a liberal arts education and civil rights, and he argued against direct confrontation with white people.

In 1895, Washington spoke to a racially mixed crowd at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. The speech—which Black activist W.E.B. Du Bois would criticize and later refer to as “The Atlanta Compromise”—described Washington’s “accommodationist” philosophy and served as a lightning rod for controversy. One line in particular reverberated for years: “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”

Some, particularly in the Black press, strongly disagreed with this approach. Others felt he was being pragmatic, seeking to reduce anti-Black violence with a message that could appease southern whites.

A year later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” was constitutional, and legal segregation would stand until the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that overturned it.

Washington might have been maneuvering behind the scenes more than he let on, however. He gave money to those who fought discrimination and was reportedly a part owner of the Black newspaper The New York Age, striking a conciliatory tone in public while potentially supporting activist causes in private.

Washington was widowed twice. He married a Malden acquaintance named Fanny Norton Smith, who also attended Hampton, in 1882. They had a daughter before Smith died suddenly in 1884. Washington then married Olivia Davidson, assistant principal at Tuskegee, in 1885 and had two sons with her before Davidson passed away from tuberculosis in 1889. He wed Margaret James Murray, who served as the Tuskegee Institute’s “lady principal,” in 1892, and remained married to her until his death in 1915.

On October 16, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt hosted Washington for dinner—and it caused a stir, particularly in the South. Washington was the first Black person to dine at the White House, and sharing dinner was viewed as a sign of equality among the diners at that time Additionally, Roosevelt’s wife and daughter were in attendance, which added fueled opponents’ fury.

The Memphis Scimitar opined that “the most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States was committed yesterday by the President,” while its rival,  the Memphis Commercial Appeal, wrote, “President Roosevelt has committed a blunder that is worse than a crime, and no atonement or future act of his can remove the self-imprinted stigma.”

The White House tried to walk back its announcement of the event and frame it as a lunch, a story it stuck to for several decades. In the 1930s, a reporter asked Mrs. Roosevelt whether the occasion was a lunch or dinner, and, after checking her calendar, she confirmed it had been a dinner.

Late in his life, Washington met Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck & Co., and convinced him to join the board of directors at Tuskegee. Washington and Rosenwald kept in touch and soon started discussing ways of educating Black children.

Washington had already been enormously successful in fundraising efforts at Tuskegee, Rosenwald was an ardent philanthropist, and the two men both valued education. They embarked upon a mission of building schools for Black youth in the South.

Though Washington died before any schools were built, the foundation he helped create went on to build almost 5000 schools between 1917 and 1932, plus teachers’ homes, industrial buildings, and privies. Staff from Tuskegee Institute designed the buildings early on before the Rosenwald Foundation took over in 1920. The Rosenwald schools began to close and merge with white schools when segregation was deemed unconstitutional in 1954.

Booker T. Washington died on November 14, 1915, of “elevated hypertension.” He had been in New York and, upon learning that he had little time left, was able to board a train to Tuskegee to die at home near the Tuskegee Institute. He arrived home around midnight and died at 4:40 a.m.

Almost 8000 people attended Washington’s funeral on Nov. 17 at the Tuskegee Institute Chapel. He is buried on a hill on the campus.

The Post Office Department issued a stamp honoring Washington on April 7, 1940, the first postage to honor a Black man or woman. The stamp was a 10-cent denomination, higher than the everyday three-cent stamps of the time.

Tuskegee Institute hosted the first day of issue ceremony; the Smithsonian National Postal Museum wrote that the stamp was so popular it necessitated two “unprecedented” second day of issue ceremonies in two additional cities. In 1956, the Post Office Department honored Washington with another stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary of his birth.